My previous post was about a new feature which I would like to see on Facebook, where you can see all your FB likes (not the FB pages, but Statuses, Pictures, Videos, Links, Notes) and comments at one place.

Guess what, not Facebook but Google had come up with a similar feature for Google Buzz where you can see all the posts, comments and likes you have made on Buzz. Following is a screen shot of how it looks like on my Buzz profile.

“By default, these tabs are only visible to you. If you want to share your comments and likes tabs, you can choose to make them publicly visible to others from the Buzz tab under Settings” As I have mentioned in the previous post this will be highly helpful if you want to go through your past posts, likes and comments.

On Facebook, with ‘Like’ being added to comments it will be somewhat complex to add aforementioned kind of a feature. But still Facebook can ignore ‘Likes’ on comments and instead include the “Likes” you made on other web sites. And even with these ‘Likes’ on other web sites, Facebook can bring up a stand alone book marking service.

I don't know whether Google had seen my post to come with the said feature :D If someone needs there are 10 more mentioned here :) Do you have anymore in your mind ?

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Everybody is eagerly waiting to see what the next Facebook feature would be. Do you have any guesses? Well I have one, rather it is something I would like to see within Facebook as a feature.

By the way am I talking too much about Facebook ? (1st post, 2nd post, 3rd post, 4th post, 5th post, 6th post ), hope not;). When there are over 350 active users worldwide, I don’t think it’s something worthless:) Back to the topic.

When we surf through Facebook, we come across many many status updates (mm.. that will be my next post I guess :) ), links, videos, pictures, notes etc. Sometimes we click on the Like button and sometimes we comment on them. But what if I want to take a look at the items I have liked and commented sometime back there’s no easy way for that. Either I have to depend on memory by relating to some person or some incident or I have to walkback through my past activities. It’s really a time consuming task.

The item I'm looking for can be a very informative link, a hilarious video, a picture of a memorable moment etc. Someone can suggest to use the typical bookmarking methods for this purpose. But as the number of items keep increasing it will be too messy and complex.

For example if I want to find out all the comments I have left in the blogosphere there’s one place to find all. If you follow this link you can find out all the comments I have left in other’s blogs. But as Facebook is inaccessible externally the solution should come within the Facebook platform. I have no idea that how far will Facebook support to develop such an application by a 3rd party developer. So the best thing would be Facebook bringing by its own.

In brief it will look like following.

	Statuses	Pictures	Videos	Links	Notes
Liked	1. Akila’s	1. Uni Album	1. Singing	1. TechCrunch	1. My Life
	2. Frank’s	2. Trip	2. …..	2. ….	2. ….
	3. …	3. …	3. …	3. …	3. …
Commented	1. Akila’s	1. My Album	1. Flying	1. Mashable	1. FB stats
	2. Frank’s	2. London	2. Playing	2. …..	2. …..
	3. …	3. …	3. …	3. …	3. …

Of course this is just a sketch :) If Facebook really going to develop such an application/feature they can surely come up with a better model :)

What do you all think about this one?

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If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you would have noticed that I had a widget called “Posts I’m thinking of” (Still it’s there:) ) There I had mentioned something like “Next Facebook Feature”:) The feature I was dreaming of has become a reality.

via Mashable

Facebook just sent shockwaves through the social web with its announcement that they will be supporting @mentions in status updates. The feature, which Facebook calls tagging, allows you to not only reference friends, but groups, pages, and events.

Well as you might know that this is something copied from Twitter. And it will be a major threat for Twitter as well.

Without any hesitation we will say that this move is a direct attack on its upstart competitor Twitter , whose @mention feature (formerly known as @reply) has been an integral part of the microblogging service.

This is not the first time Facebook copied other sites especially Twitter. Facebook copied Twitter real-time search and FriendFeed’s ‘Like’ feature. ( Facebook acquired FriendFeed later )

I thought about this @Mention feature because of the difficulties I faced when using Facebook. For example if you are mentioning someone’s name in a status update there was no way that person could know about. If you are mentioning that person’s name in a comment it was the same. Further more you could not relate someone to a picture without tagging him/herself. This was something many people didn’t like.

Beside that when it comes to Facebook notes, only the author can tag people. A reader doesn’t have the opportunity to relate it to other people (But they could share). In my case I thought of using Facebook username anywhere with the ‘@’ sign whereas Facebook uses the user’s name and currently this feature is only available on ‘Facebook Wall’

Why Will This Be a Good Move ?

• More interactivity among users.
• This will a platform for larger conversations
• This will attract Twitterholics in to Facebook (will it be;)?)
• The users who could be attracted by Twitter will be attracted to Facebook.

Why Will This Be a Bad Move ?

• Existing users might not like this feature
• Too much conversations – SPAM ( Some say the new Facebook app makes photo spam
• Existing users might leave Facebook as it’s getting too much annoying (will it be?)

Actually it is arguable how effective integrating Twitterlike features in to Facebook because Facebook is a more closed network whereas Twitter is more opened.

But Facebook has become a long way being just a typical social network. It has attracted most of the leading brands in to its umbrella. So who knows this might be a Twitter killing move.

Twitter watch out. Facebook is on a roll here!

Further reading

• Facebook @Mentions: Five Ways They Could Impact Twitter

• How To Use Facebook’s @Mentions Status Tagging

• Twitter vs. Facebook: Who Will Win in Real-time Search?

• Tag Friends in Your Status and Posts - Facebook Blog

Update:

Twitter users has the habit of using "RT @username when they re-post an update sent by another user. But on Facebook there was no such a habit. But with the @Mentions feature it's now time to bring that habit to Facebook as well.

Shall we call it RP (RePost) or use same old RT in honour of Twitter ?

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When I was checking requests on my Facebook (wiki) account this morning there were 43 Barn Buddy requests in my FB account and I was totally amazed. Is Barn Buddy the most popular game on Facebook at the moment? What is Barn Buddy?
Barn Buddy is a farming game where you grow your own crops and sell them for coins or you can steal others' crops or add bugs and weeds to their farms.

Barn Buddy Description

Developer: TheBroth, Inc.

Description: Look after your friends' farms and grow some crops together! Or be naughty, steal their crops and add bugs and weeds to their farms. :) NEW! Now with guard dog!

Categories: No Categories

Barn Buddy Screen Shots

When considering my friend network on Facebook; yes it's the most popular game on Facebook at the moment.
But I did a search and found out that it is not when considering the entire FB userbase:)

• The Top 25 Facebook Games for June 2009
• Facebook Application Leaderboard

But these 2 reports are contradicting.

• In AllFacebook it says 'BarnBuddy is in no 40' and 'Who Has The Biggest Brain is in no 42'
• In InsideSocialGames it doesn't include Barn Buddy at all, but Who Has The Biggest Brain is at 16th position.

So we can't get in to a conclusion based on these 2 reports. (But according to both reports 'Texas HoldEm Poker' is the most popular game on Facebook. So I got my answer:D)

Anyway both these reports are about 1 month old, so the current stats may be different. But by looking at the matrices( AllFacebook, AppData) we can see that it's gaining a lot of users and the numbers are growing at a good rate. I think that's why I received such a no of requests :D.

So should I also play Barn Buddy ? :)

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Facebook has started offering user names beginning at 12:01am EDT Saturday, June 13, 2009. Go to http://www.facebook.com/username/ and claim your user name now before someone else claiming it :)

Things to Remember

1. You wll be able to choose a user name on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer.

2. You will be given some suggestions as your user name, or else you can choose your own.
ex:


2. Generic words are not available as usernames. Ex: Flowers, Pizza.

3. Once you claim your username, you can't change it. So think twice when choosing a user name.

4. After claiming your user name, you can have an easy to remember URL for your profile.
ex:

You can find more details on Facebook Pages and on Facebook Blog

Again, Hurry Up and Claim Your Facebook User Name!

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How to import Blog Posts as Facebook notes? This is a question some friends of mine asked recently. It is something I've been doing for quiet sometime (This service was enabled sometime ago). It's pretty easy. Let's see how to do it.

1. First log in to your Facebook account and go to home page. There in the Applications area you can find the "Notes" link, and click on it. (If it does not appear there, you can view it by clicking more link)
   
   
   


2. When you go to notes page In the Notes Settings area click on the link "Import a blog"
   
   


3. In the Import a Blog page, enter your blog url and click on "Start Importing"
   
   
4. The you will be directed to a page where you can preview the imported notes. At the bottom of that page you can see a button to confirm the import.
   
   
5. Then check your "My Notes" area. You will be able to see all your imported notes. From now on whenever you publish a new blog post, it'll be automatically imported as a new note to Facebook.

Enjoy!!!

Update (20.05.2009) : Here is a video :)

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Oh Facebook ! It's you again. Today I received a mail from Facebook saying that they have lost my email notification settings. Following is the mail I received.


"From: Facebook <************@facebookmail.com>
To: *******@******.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 25, 2008 4:31:29 PM
Subject: Please reset your email notification settings.

Unfortunately, the settings that control which email notifications get sent to you were lost. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

To reset your email notification settings, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?notifications

Thanks,
The Facebook Team"


First I thought this is a mail from a phishing site. Then I realized that this is really from Facebook mail. But without clicking the link given I directly logged in to Facebook. Oh! I was very upset by the message I saw.

"Please reset your email notification settings.

Unfortunately, your email notification settings have been lost. You can reset them on the Notifications page. We're sorry for the inconvenience."


How did you lose my email notification settings Facebook ? It's a common fact that nowadays every system keeping backups. But why Facebook didn't keep its system backups. I wonder whether this is an isolated incident. I didn't hear from others that they have received such a mail. Though its isolated or not this is not good for the "reputation" Facebook has.
Earlier in one of my posts I have mentioned some privacy issues of Facebook.
If this current incident is common for a whole bunch of people, then an explanation will be needed from Facebook.

Did anyone of you experience this ???

Update :
I found a similar story. Click here to find out.

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This is not something that the whole FB community expected. FB is not a safer place as we expected. I'm saying this through my personal experience. Even outsiders (Who are not in your friend list) can access your personal pictures.
Here's the story,

One of my friends (Let's say A) has commented on another person's (Let's say B) picture, and it is shown as a post under A's profile.
A is in my friend list, B is not. B's profile can not be searched even using FB search, which means B is having a private profile.

BUT
through that A's post link I can access B's pictures, though that person hasn't allowed me to do so.
Even more, I can access that picture and all the pictures in that album (but can't comment on those pics,Thank God!). Try this yourself!
This is a dangerous situation and a threat to people's privacy. Many people moved in to FB because of the amount of privacy FB allowed. This is not the first time I experienced this thing.
When I first experienced it I thought it's a rare occasion. But seems like it isn't.

Is FB keeping its promise of PRIVACY ???

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